How To Use PR To Get Your Brand Found On Google

When Googling something, do you ever look at the second page of the search results?

We’d be willing to bet no…or rarely, at best.

When it comes to Google, first page is king – anything beyond that might as well be nowhere.

But getting your brand on the first page of Google is a lot easier said than done, especially if you’re in a competitive industry.

There’s a whole field of expertise based on this – SEO – which seeks to get businesses ranking higher and at the top of the search results.

While there are all sorts of components to SEO, a key one is building high authority links.

If you see ‘high authority links’ and think ‘What does that even mean?’ then here’s a basic overview…

Google sees media websites such as the BBC, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Times and so on, as trustworthy websites.

If these trustworthy websites are talking about your brand, and even better, hyperlinking back to it, then this (effectively) is regarded as an endorsement by Google’s algorithms.

Consequently, they’ll put your brand higher up in the search results.

Sounds nice, of course, but how do you get those links?

Well, this is where PR comes in.

PR puts you in front of the journalists who are writing the articles that can give you those links.

They won’t just do it, of course, you need to give them newsworthy content and an excuse to link.

So how is it done?

Here’s a quick example of how we’ve done it in the past here at Pic PR.

We began working with Home Leisure Direct, a leading supplier of games room equipment, in 2015, with the brand keen to generate these links.

To help do this, we proposed launching ‘Games Room of the Year’ – a competition to determine Britain’s best games room. 

The media love people and love escapism – so offering insight into people’s games rooms for others to enjoy provided a perfect excuse for journalists to write about HLD.

From a link building perspective, it offered threefold opportunity:

1)    Announcing the competition and shouting out for entries, we would give the incentive to link to the HLD website as we pointed the way for people to enter. 

2)    Revealing 10 finalists, as well as sharing these with press, we’d house them on the HLD website and invite the public to vote for their favourite – driving both traffic and links.

3)    Sharing some pictures of the winning entry with press, we’d hold some back along with additional video content so that the press would link for their audience to ‘see more’.

Across these stages we achieved coverage via the likes of The Mail Online, The Telegraph, The Mirror Online, the Metro, The Sun, Lad Bible, the Daily Star and dozens of regional outlets – generating lots of links as part of it.

Many of the outlets also shared on their social channels which helped drive traffic to the stories and the website, while also improving Home Leisure Direct’s social media following. 

This also helped Home Leisure Direct become synonymous with games rooms – something that increases the volume of branded searches (those Googling 'Home Leisure Direct'). This is something Google views as a trust signal when determining its rankings – boosting where HLD appears. Even unlinked brand mentions then, helps to drive searches and therefore ranking – but with links serving to solidify this in Google's algorithmic eyes.

After four years of implementation, having been satisfied with the impact on its rankings, Home Leisure Direct felt the press activity was essentially a case of ‘mission completed’ and it now conducts the competition purely via its social channels and database – which also received a significant boost in numbers thanks to our activities.

That’s just a quick example of a format that’s worked well in the past – so if you’d like to dominate the online landscape in your niche and need help doing this, then get in touch and we’ll see what we can do to help you.